DNA methylation is a key epigenetic process which has been intimately associated with gene regulation. In recent years growing evidence has associated DNA methylation status with a variety of diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, changes to DNA methylation have also recently been implicated in the ageing process. The factors which underpin DNA methylation are complex, and remain to be fully elucidated. Over the years mathematical modelling has helped to shed light on the dynamics of this important molecular system...

Assessment of Tumor Mutational Burden (TMB) for response stratification of cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors is emerging as a new biomarker. Commonly defined as the total number of exonic somatic mutations, TMB approximates the amount of neoantigens that potentially are recognized by the immune system. While whole exome sequencing (WES) is an unbiased approach to quantify TMB, implementation in diagnostics is hampered by tissue availability as well as time and cost constrains. Conversely, panel-based targeted sequencing is nowadays widely used in routine molecular diagnostics, but only very limited data are available on its performance for TMB estimation...

Fraction unbound (fu ) is a critical drug distribution parameter commonly utilized for modeling efficacious dosage and safety margin predictions. An over-estimation of fu for 13 chemically diverse small molecule drugs primarily bound to alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AAG) in human plasma was discovered when in vitro results from our screening lab were compared to literature values. Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), a plasticizer known to be used in the manufacture of blood collection bags, was extracted from plasma obtained through three common techniques that allowed contact with DEHP, and drug fu values in plasma from each collection method were estimated using the HTDialysis protein binding methodology...

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been introduced in previous studies as a synergistic technique to modify the surface chemistry and topography of titanium-based implants to control their biocompatibility. In this study, the effectiveness of CMP implementation on titanium-based implant surface modification was compared to machined implants, such as baseline and etching and biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP) particle-based sand blasting treatments, in terms of the surface chemical and mechanical performance...

The demand for marinated chicken worldwide, is continuously growing. To date, limited data on addition of active components of Essential Oils (EOs) to marinades for chicken preservation are available. The antimicrobial effect of carvacrol and thymol, added at 0.4 and 0.8% v/w to marinated fresh chicken, stored in air and under vacuum packaging (VP), for 21 days at 4 °C, was examined. The samples were monitored for microbiological (total viable count (TVC), lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Brochothrix thermosphacta, Pseudomonas spp...

Chronic high altitude hypoxia leads to an increase in red cell numbers and hemoglobin concentration. However, the effects of long-term intermittent hypoxia on hemoglobin concentration have not fully been studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate hemoglobin levels in workers commuting between an elevation of 3,800 m (2-week working shift) and lowland below 1,700 m (2 weeks of holiday). A total of 266 healthy males, aged from 20 to 69 years (mean age 45.9 ± 0.6 years), were included into this study. The duration of intermittent high altitude exposure ranged from 0 to 21 years...

BACKGROUND: Determining protein-protein interactions and their binding affinity are important in understanding cellular biological processes, discovery and design of novel therapeutics, protein engineering, and mutagenesis studies. Due to the time and effort required in wet lab experiments, computational prediction of binding affinity from sequence or structure is an important area of research. Structure-based methods, though more accurate than sequence-based techniques, are limited in their applicability due to limited availability of protein structure data...

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by infection and subsequent overreaction by the immune system. Physicians effectively treat sepsis with early administration of antibiotics. However, excessive use of antibiotics on false positive cases cultivates antibiotic resistant bacterial strains and can waste resources while false negative cases result in unacceptable mortality rates. Accurate early prediction ensures correct, early antibiotic treatment; unfortunately, prediction remains daunting due to error-ridden electronic medical records (EMRs) and the inherent complexity of sepsis...

The main goal of this work was to establish a hybrid device incorporating an electrochemical-based transducer on a conventional lateral flow assay strip in order to perform an on-chip fast testing method for the detection of various bio-analyses. In this context, the expected development of the digital lateral-flow immunoassay to be considered a reliable low-cost instrument improves the future of the very simple and flexible approach oflateral-flow assays. It is anticipated to achieve a digital quantitative lateral-flow immunoassay by exploring the electrochemical transducers alongwith recognition elements for digitization of commercially available rapid tests...

Historically, Classic Extended Physiological Proprioception (EPP) as an upper-limb prosthesis control topology has been outperforming functionally all other topologies of the past. A novel Biomechatronic EPP controller has been designed to overcome shortcomings of the classic EPP control topology, and has been hypothesized to be functionally equivalent to the classic EPP topology. Using the dSpace realtime hardware platform and other mechanical and electronic components, the following were developed in the lab: (a) A Biomechatronic EPP controller, (b) a classic EPP controller, (c) an "unconnected" controller and (d) an EMG controller...

Further develop strong engineering skills, supplement with knowledge of medicine and biology. Acquire clinical problems requiring solutions from medical and biological professionals. Form design teams to solve those problems: review the literature, confer with experts, brainstorm all the possibilities, select the most promising solution, build it in the lab, test it, iterate, publish.

Among various brain activity patterns, Steady State Visual Evoked Potential (SSVEP) based Brain Computer Inter-face (BCI) requires the least training time while carrying the fastest information transfer rate, making it highly suitable for deploying efficient self-paced BCI systems. In this study, we propose a Spectrum and Phase Adaptive CCA (SPACCA) for subject-and device-specific SSVEP-based BCI. Cross subject heterogeneity of spectrum distribution is taken into consideration to improve the prediction accuracy...

Children with prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) exhibit early self-regulatory impairments, reflecting a life-course persistent propensity toward behavioral disinhibition. Previously, we demonstrated the protective role of parental responsiveness for reducing the risk of exposure-related disruptive behavior in adolescence. Here, we expanded this line of inquiry, examining whether responsiveness moderates the relation of PTE to a broader set of behavioral disinhibition features in early childhood and testing alternative diathesis-stress versus differential susceptibility explanatory models...

BACKGROUND: Viral load (VL) testing is being scaled up in resource-limited settings. However, not all commercially available VL testing methods have been evaluated under field conditions. This study is one of a few to evaluate the Biocentric platform for VL quantification in routine practice in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: Venous blood specimens were obtained from patients eligible for VL testing at two health facilities in Swaziland from October 2016 to March 2017...

Malaria control programs implementing Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLINs) are encouraged to conduct field monitoring of nets' survival, fabric integrity and insecticidal bio-efficacy. The reference method for testing the insecticide activity of LLINs needs 100 two-to-five-day-old female mosquitoes per net, which is highly resource-intensive. We aimed at identifying an alternative protocol, using fewer mosquitos, while ensuring a precision in the main indicator of ±5 percentage points (pp). We compared different laboratory methods against the probability of the LLIN to fail the test as determined by a hierarchical Bayesian model...

Microinjection moulding combined with the use of removable inserts is one of the most promising manufacturing processes for microfluidic devices, such as lab-on-chip, that have the potential to revolutionize the healthcare and diagnosis systems. In this work, we have designed, fabricated and tested a compact and disposable plastic optical stretcher. To produce the mould inserts, two micro manufacturing technologies have been used. Micro electro discharge machining (µEDM) was used to reproduce the inverse of the capillary tube connection characterized by elevated aspect ratio...

During rolling stock operation, various kinds of energy such as vibration, heat, and train-induced wind are dissipated. The amount of energy dissipation cannot be overlooked when a heavy railroad vehicle operates at high speed. Therefore, if the wasted energy is effectively harvested, it can be used to power components like low power sensor nodes. This study aims to review a method of collecting waste heat, caused by the axle bearing of bogie in a rolling stock. A thermoelectric module (TEM) was used to convert the temperature gradient between the surface of the axle bearing housing and the outdoor air into electric energy...